market: video experiments

Visual experiments from the MARKET project. The following clips were part of a large scale video art presentation titled You Make My Life Hell, I Can’t Live Without You, made with and
about the people of the “Mahne Yehuda” produce market in Jerusalem. Note: These are some experiments we are working on, and should not be construed as representing the final visual language of the MARKET project.


ASHRAF has been working in the market since he was about 12 years old. He’s one of the most hard-working young Palestinian men in the market, and he’s fearless. He recently got into a serious fight after trying to come on to one of the stall-owners wives, after which he disappeared from the market.


MOHAMMAD was kicked out of school three years ago. His father took off around the same time and Mohammed has been working since to help support his family. He’s showing talent as a photographer, but the cameras he got from the project keep disappearing (he says his older brother stole them from him and sold them.)


KHALIL is the only kid in the market who works for his family. His father was a “basket boy,” and possibly his grandfather as well.


“CRAZY” MOSHE used to be one of the market’s biggest employers of “basket boys.” Recently, due to disintegrating cartilage in his knees (a well known curse among vegetable hawkers), and hundreds of thousands of dollars of gambling debts, he left his family’s stall and started working as a cook at a new Iraqi restaurant in the market.


MORAN is a single mom, a hugely gifted baker and the “reluctant” owner of the first (and most popular) café in the market, the place where the market’s renaissance (and gentrification) began. People say that she has a huge heart and can’t help but hire the most hard luck cases around, Palestinian orphans, Eritrean refugees, starving art students, etc.


MEIR used to be a truck driver. Now he owns a new Khachapuri (sort of a Georgian pizza) joint.


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